Truth is the beginning of wisdom…

Quotes To Ponder

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse [money, bounty, assistance, gifts] from the public treasury.
- Alexis de Tocqueville

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
- Alexander Frazer Tytler

Archive for the ‘Health Care’ Category

Obamacare Grants IRS Perilous Power

Thursday, 18 Mar 2010 05:46 PM

By: David A. Patten

The Internal Revenue Service would gain sweeping new powers under President Obama’s healthcare reform proposals, in what Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee are calling a “dangerous expansion” of IRS powers.

Among the new powers the IRS would assume, the report says: The authority to confiscate tax refunds, to impose fines of over $2,200 per taxpayer, and to verify whether taxpayers’ health insurance coverage is “acceptable.”

One measure of the scope of the IRS’ new responsibilities under the healthcare overhaul: The agency might have to hire as many as 16,500 additional auditors, agents, and other employees in order to administer the program, according to Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee.

“It is a very dangerous expansion of the IRS’ power and reach into the lives of virtually every American,” Camp said in a statement released Thursday afternoon.

The Ways and Means report portrays healthcare reform as having a wide-ranging impact on how the IRS operates, including:

IRS agents would be tasked with determining whether Americans had obtained the insurance coverage required under the individual mandate.

Individuals could be fined $2,250 or 2 percent of income, whichever is greater, if you are unable to prove you have “minimum essential coverage.”

The IRS would be empowered to confiscate tax refunds if necessary.

Audits probably would increase as a result of the legislation’s new requirements.

The budget for IRS operations will balloon by $10 billion in the next decade in order to administrate the new program.

Nearly half of the new individual mandate taxes will be paid “by Americans earning less than 300 percent of poverty, $66,150 for a family of four.

A statement that Democrats are sure to dispute, the report, which Camp and fellow GOP Rep. Charles Boustany of Louisiana prepared, says healthcare reform would “fundamentally alter the relationship between the IRS and taxpayers.”

Essentially, the Republicans state, the reform bill makes the IRS responsible for “tracking the monthly health insurance status of roughly 300 million Americans.”

They express the concern that reform would alter the IRS’ traditional mission of collecting revenue, and adding a social-program delivery function to its portfolio.

“This is an unprecedented new role for the IRS – one that will inject the IRS even further into the lives of American families,” the report warns.

Ironically, two groups of residents would be declared exempt from IRS enforcement measures, according to the Republicans: One is illegal immigrants who aren’t supposed to be included in the insurance exchanges in the first place. The other consists of people who are incarcerated.

A common example used to further the cause of “socialized medicine” in the United States is to point out how well it is working in countries such as France and Canada. However, those living in Canada know full well that their government run health care program is most certainly not working. As a matter of fact, many Canadian citizens choose to hire high priced brokers to find them quality health care right here in the United States because of the terrible bureaucracy that controls all forms of health care in Canada. For more about what is really going on with the Canadian health care system please watch these short but very informative documentary videos:

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government role in health care. Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts about America’s health care system should be considered, says Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at the Stanford University Medical Center.

Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers:

Breast cancer mortality is 52% higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88% higher in the United Kingdom.

Prostate cancer mortality is 604% higher in the United Kingdom and 457% higher in Norway.

The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40% higher.

Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries:

Some 56% of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease.

By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36% of the Dutch, 29% of the Swiss, 26% of Germans, 23% of Britons and 17% of Italians receive them.

Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians:

Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7% versus 5.8%).

Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20% more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”

Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom:

Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long – sometimes more than a year – to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.

All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.

In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.

Because of how the Single Payer System is designed Canadian citizens have NO WHERE NEAR the choices that we as American citizens do. As a matter of fact, until very recently (2005) it was simply not possible for a Canadian citizen to pay for their own health care or to purchase private medical insurance that would “bump them up the long waiting list” for medical treatments. The reason Canadian citizens now have the right to do so (and it is still limited) is a direct result of long hard battles (many that are still being fought) that have been waged by brave Canadian citizens like Dr. Jacques Chaoulli who took his clients case all the way to the Canadian supreme court and won! Dr. Chaoulli (http://www.healthcoalition.ca/chaoulli.html) and his patient, George Zeliotis, launched their legal challenge to the Canadian government’s monopolized healthcare system after waiting more than a year for hip-replacement surgery.

Canada’s high court found for the plaintiffs and in doing so issued the following statement: “The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public healthcare system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public healthcare. The evidence also demonstrates that the prohibition against private health insurance and its consequence of denying people vital healthcare result in physical and psychological suffering that meets a threshold test of seriousness.” Furthermore, Justice Marie Deschamps said, “Many patients on non-urgent waiting lists are in pain and cannot fully enjoy any real quality of life. The right to life and to personal inviolability is therefore affected by the waiting times.”

Furthermore, the Vancouver, British Columbia-based Fraser Institute which keeps track of Canadian waiting times for various medical procedures. According to the Fraser Institute’s 14th annual edition of “Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada (2006),” total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and treatment, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, rose from 17.7 weeks in 2003 to 17.9 weeks in 2006. Depending on which Canadian province you live in, a simple MRI requires a wait between 7 and 33 weeks! Orthopedic surgery could require a wait of 14 weeks for a referral from a general practitioner to the specialist and then another 24 weeks from the specialist to treatment! For even more real life horror stories about Canadian citizens left in the lurch by the Canadian healthcare system read the well researched and fact based Wall Street Journal article entitled “Too Old For Hip Surgery” here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123413701032661445.html?mod=article-outset-box This is what happens when you put government in control of your health care decisions. Doing so in this country, would be nothing short of a train wreck. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply uninformed or “willfully ignorant”.

Real healthcare reform can be accomplished through consumer education, weeding out abuse of existing Federal entitlement programs (via a legitimate needs assessment) and continued funding of State sponsored Risk Pools so that people who are declined for insurance have an affordable option to continue coverage if declined on the individual major medical market. Following these few simple steps will go a long way towards not only maintaining our current health care system, but also towards keeping the bulk of our nations risk where it belongs, namely with the private health insurance sector. In light of the recent multi Trillion Dollar “Bail Outs” and many other failing corporations coming to the table with their hats in their hands (and their private jets on the tarmac) the last thing our government should do is start cutting more blind “bail out” checks in an effort to “reform” the U.S. health care system.

Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle landed in “hell” this week where he witnessed a teenage boy shot in the head and a girl sold to an older man. He was in the collapsed city of Port-au-Prince where rubble from former buildings and streets piled with corpses give the impression of an aftermath of a war zone.

Driscoll, along with Pastor James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel in the Chicago-area, landed in the capital of Haiti on Monday to assess the situation and needs of Haitian churches and to deliver 1,000 pounds of relief supplies.

On his first day on the ground, Driscoll said he heard a gunshot behind him and when he turn to look he saw a teenage boy immediately killed by a shot to the head. The teenage boy was just a few feet away from a seminary property and next to a makeshift clinic where thousands of people slept outside, Driscoll reported on his Facebook page.

In an interview with USA Today on Tuesday when he returned to America, Driscoll said the boy was murdered “for no apparent reason. He was just shot in the head and left in the street.”

Fears of violence, looting, and chaos in the aftermath of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince last Tuesday grew when relief supplies, including food and clean water, could not meet the immediate needs of quake victims.

But the fears somewhat eased Wednesday when U.S. troops provided security for water and food aid deliveries.

In addition to concerns of unrest due to shortage in relief supplies, aid agencies are also concerned about the some 4,000 criminals that escaped from prisons after the earthquake struck.

There are about 12,000 U.S. military personnel on the ground in Haiti, and the U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed this week to temporarily add 2,000 U.N. troops and 1,500 police to the 9,000-member peacekeeping force in Haiti.

Besides being troubled by the security situation, Driscoll also confronted an incident he believed to be part of the sex trade in Haiti’s capital amid the wreckage.

“If u want a phone, cigarettes or a teenage girl you can get them here in Port au Prince,” Driscoll tweeted. “Like the American who said he’s on a relief mission and bought a hungry girl despite our confrontation.”

The pastor elaborated in the USA Today interview that a man pushing a cart while selling cell phones, cigarettes “and a few young girls” asked Driscoll, “You want to buy loving?”

Another man, who claimed to be a translator for a relief agency, negotiated with the seller on a price for a young girl.

“I (Driscoll) asked him what he was trying to do,” the American pastor recalled. “He said, ‘Oh, she’s a friend of mine. We’re just trying to connect.’

“That’s ridiculous. A young girl. A man 20 or 30 years older. I told him this was unacceptable. MacDonald confronted him, too. But there were no police and you could argue all you wanted but the girl took his money and they walked away.”

Driscoll plans to report the American man, and submit his photo, to the relief agency he supposedly works for, according to USA Today.

MacDonald and Driscoll are part of a new effort called Churches Helping Churches, which led them to travel to Haiti this week. The initiative seeks to address the immediate and long-term needs of churches affected by disasters. Many times churches provide social services – such as health care, humanitarian aid and education – to the local communities, so rebuilding local churches would help address the communities’ practical as well as spiritual needs.

Senator Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) ability to sway all 60 Democratic Senators to vote for his health care bill monstrosity wasn’t an exploit of legislative prowess-but taxpayer-funded bribery. On the heels of the “Louisiana Purchase,” a deal that saw Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) pocket $300 million in pork, Senator Reid stuffed billions more into the Democrats’ stockings in exchange for their crucial Sunday night vote. In the leadership’s edition of “Let’s Make a Deal,” Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebr.) was the biggest winner of all. While Americans in the other 49 states will have to pick up the tab for the bill’s expansion in Medicaid, the Nebraska Democrat made sure his state got off scot-free. He traded in his pro-life scruples for a guarantee that the Cornhuskers will never pay a cent toward the government’s plan. And for what? An abortion “compromise” that may actually be worse than the actual bill.

Under Senator Nelson’s opt-out plan, states can refuse to offer abortion coverage-but their taxpayers will still be subsidizing the states that don’t! Meanwhile, the senators from Vermont and Massachusetts watched the Nebraska deal unfold and decided to negotiate for something similar. All together, these statewide exemptions could cost a minimum of $1.2 billion! Pennsylvania, New York, and Florida all protected their Medicare programs from cuts, while other states will have to find ways to manage with the scaled-back program in the underlying legislation.

Also, Senators Nelson and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) have made sure that certain insurance companies in their states are off the hook from a new $7 billion dollar tax. On page 328 of Senator Reid’s manager’s amendment, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), the master of illicit sweetheart deals, got his kickback-a $100 million bonus for the University of Connecticut to do with whatever they want. A staunch supporter of the public option, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) was “persuaded” to drop his concerns after Senator Reid offered his state a $10 billion grant for “community health centers”-money that could easily be funneled to facilities that perform abortions. Playing hard-to-get certainly has its advantages in this new political climate.

Yesterday, some of the Democrats who didn’t get the same incentives are kicking themselves. When Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) couldn’t get past the reporters swarming Ben Nelson on her way to the cloture vote, she quipped, “I know I’m not as important as Senator Nelson. I didn’t get the money for my state. I was too stupid.” To read more about how this bill could destroy American medicine, check out this excellent op-ed from Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, ” Change Nobody Believes In.” We do have one quibble with the article though. Senator Nelson might think he got abortion restrictions (he didn’t), but even he admits he isn’t quite sure.

As the suicidal Democratic congressmen proceed to rubber-stamp the Obama healthcare reform despite the drubbing their party took in the 2009 elections, the president trotted out the endorsements of the AMA and the AARP to stimulate support. But these – and the other endorsements – his package has received are all bought and paid for.

Here are some of the deals:

The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21% cut in physicians’ reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5% to 6% reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors. By now, they have risen to 21%. With this blackmail leverage, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill … or else!

The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush (43) passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.

Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP – which supposedly represents them – will make more money. (If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative group; contact sbarton@americanseniors.org. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. (A drop in the bucket of their almost $3 trillion projected cost over the next decade.) They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.

Insurance companies got access to 40 million potential new customers. But when the Senate Finance Committee lowered the fine that would be imposed on those who don’t buy insurance from $3,500 to $1,500, the insurance companies jumped ship and now oppose the bill, albeit for the worst of motives.

The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the medical device makers. They stood for principle and wouldn’t go along with Obama’s blackmail. So the Senate Finance Committee retaliated by imposing a tax on medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accoutrements of healthcare.

So these endorsements are not freely given, but bought and paid for by an administration that is intent on passing its program at any cost.

Gardasil: Oversold, Over-Hyped, and Risky?

Life-or-death questions are being raised about Gardasil, a vaccine touted to prevent infections of human papilloma virus (HPV), which can cause cervical cancer. Merck & Co., Inc., the maker of Gardasil, staunchly defends its multi-billion dollar goldmine, stating on their website, “We are confident in the safety profile of GARDASIL.”

But Dr. Diane Harper, an obstetrician and gynecologist who helped Merck perform Gardasil’s clinical trials and who served on Merck’s advisory board for the vaccine, told CNN in an interview, “Gardasil is not without risks. It’s not a freebie.”

Since the approval of the vaccine by the FDA in 2006, health-care groups have shouted out warnings of danger, and have also said that Merck has energetically mass-marketed Gardasil with disregard both for known current side effects as well as for possible long-term side effects.

Here are some of the established risks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

1. Death. According to the CDC, more than 25 million doses of Gardasil have been distributed in the United States as of June 1, 2009, resulting in 43 deaths. Gardasil is the confirmed cause in 26 of those deaths, while 9 are still being investigated, and 8 remain unconfirmed.

2. Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS). Cases of GBS, a peripheral neuropathy that can result in paralysis and death, have been reported to the CDC as a result of Gardasil vaccination.

3. Blood Clots. Clots occurring in the heart, lungs and legs have reportedly been triggered by Gardasil.

About 40% of adverse effects occur on the day of vaccination. Approximately 14,000 reports have been made, with 93% considered by the CDC to be “non-serious,” and 7% to be “serious.”

What does the reporting of 14,000 incidents of side effects really mean? In an interview with Newsmax, Dr. Russell Blaylock, a nationally recognized neurosurgeon, health practitioner, and editor of The Blaylock Wellness Report, said, “Multiply the number of incidents actually reported by ten and you’ll get an accurate number.”

As to the effectiveness of Gardasil in the first place, Dr. Blaylock said, “The vaccine has never been proven to be effective, and by the time the vaccine would be needed to prevent cancer would be years later and the vaccine would be long gone from the system. If you have the organism already in your cervix, the vaccine actually increases the cervical cancer rate.”

In the light of such serious side effects, the cost/benefit ratio in terms of both lives and money must be weighed. And some frightening facts are emerging about Gardasil. In an ABC interview, Dr. Harper said, “Although the number of serious adverse events is small and rare, they are real and cannot be overlooked or dismissed without disclosing the possibility to all other possible vaccine recipients.” Dr. Harper then dropped what some consider to be a bombshell: “The rate of serious adverse events is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.”

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration is currently pondering whether to approve the use of Gardasil on boys in order to protect their partners from cervical cancer. Last week, the FDA granted approval to allow GlaxoSmithKline’s new HPV vaccine called Cervarix to be sold in the United States.

HPV Vaccine Fact: “First, there are more than 100 different types of HPV and at least 15 of them are oncogenic [tending to cause tumors]. The current vaccines target only 2 oncogenic strains: HPV-16 and HPV-18. Second, the relationship between infection at a young age and development of cancer 20 to 40 years later is not known.”– Dr. Charlotte Haug in an editorial appearing in the August 19, 2009 Journal of the American Medical Association.

An excerpt from a column on 9/8/2009 Marcia titled: Here’s what I REALLY think (an open letter to liberals) …

Dear liberal neighbors, acquaintances, friends and family,

I’m a conservative. A political and social conservative. I know that some of you assume that means I’m mean-spirited, selfish, intolerant, greedy, and perhaps even evil. But before you write me off, allow me to explain what I really think. You might be surprised to find that, at least in some areas, we want the same things. We just disagree on how to get them.

I believe in limited government. While I think government has many important roles to play (most importantly providing a military to protect our country), in general I believe the less government the better. For one thing, bureaucracy too often breeds inefficiency, mediocrity, or even worse by not rewarding performance. Anyone who’s been to his local Department of Motor Vehicles, or his post office for that matter, can attest to that. But even if government bureaucracies worked perfectly, why would I (or anyone, for that matter) want to be subject to any more laws and regulations than I already am? I believe I’m better at running my life than my congressman is.

As a believer in small government, it follows that I want my taxes to be as low as possible. I prefer to spend my own money as I choose, not because I’m greedy, but because I’ll spend it more wisely and carefully because I earned it. Government waste is a given. And while I do believe the government should help the neediest among us, welfare states simply do not work. Bill Clinton knew that well enough to act on it. I believe individuals should be encouraged to be as charitable and generous as possible. (As a Christian, I believe it’s my responsibility to help take care of people in need.) But I also believe individuals fare better when they take responsibility for their own lives. Dignity comes from taking responsibility, not handouts – and dignity breeds motivation. George Will summed it up nicely when he wrote that “excessively benevolent government is not a benefactor.” I believe in equal opportunity, but I don’t believe that equal outcomes can (or should) be mandated.

I believe in personal freedom. The less government bureaucrats have to say about my personal life, the better. Naturally we’re all subject to the laws of the land, but it’s another thing entirely to have my family’s healthcare run by committee, for example. Having lived through a few years without employer-provided health insurance, I know how tough that is. I’d still prefer that to the British system in which my brother had to wait three months for an MRI to determine what a doctor here diagnosed by my description alone: that he’d suffered a stroke at the age of 38. Guaranteed healthcare doesn’t mean much when it’s dangerously slow and just plain lousy.

Most public school systems are sad but perfect examples of how tax-supported bureaucracies simply don’t work. As a conservative, I believe in school choice. Not only would individual students benefit, it would inspire healthy competition and remind administrators that they are answerable to parents.

I am also a social conservative. I believe in traditional Judeo-Christian values, and want the freedom to continue to worship as a Christian. I also want the right to raise my children with those values. I don’t want my children taught that the practice of homosexuality is right any more than my liberal neighbors want their children taught that it’s wrong. Liberals who wouldn’t want their children taught Christian precepts in school should be able to understand why conservative Christians don’t want their children taught un-Christian precepts. In fact, if public schools focused on academics and left social and moral issues to parents, we’d all be better off. Social change dreamed up and forced on society, including children, by a few Washington insiders is a truly frightening prospect. Too much power in the hands of a small group of any persuasion is a dangerous thing.

In a nutshell, I’m for limited government that acts to preserve opportunity and encourage personal responsibility. I’m for small government that allows me the freedom to believe what I choose to believe, and raise my children accordingly. I believe it’s my duty to help people in need, and that while government has a role to play in that regard, it is among the least capable of institutions to do so with positive long-term outcomes.

Ronald Reagan captured the conservative ethos in another quote from that famous 1964 speech: “[Y]ou and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.”

Listening To A Liar
Thomas Sowell – Syndicated Columnist – 9/8/2009

The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.

The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated. If you go by words, you can be led into anything.

No doubt millions of people will be listening to the words of President Barack Obama Wednesday night when he makes a televised address to a joint session of Congress on his medical care plans. But, if they think that the words he says are what matters, they can be led into something much worse than being swindled out of their money.

One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation’s medical care before the August recess – for a program that would not take effect until 2013!

Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years – more specifically, until the year after the next presidential election?

If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next presidential election?

If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don’t we have time to go through the normal process of holding congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to “hurry up and wait” on something that is literally a matter of life and death?

If we do not believe that the president is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it. Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be.

Unfortunately, this way of doing things is all too typical of the way this administration has acted on a wide range of issues.

Consider the “stimulus” legislation. Here the administration was successful in rushing a massive spending bill through Congress in just two days – after which it sat on the president’s desk for three days, while he was away on vacation. But, like the medical care legislation, the “stimulus” legislation takes effect slowly.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will be September 2010 before even three-quarters of the money will be spent. Some economists expect that it will not all be spent by the end of 2010.

What was the rush to pass it, then? It was not to get that money out into the economy as fast as possible. It was to get that money – and the power that goes with it – into the hands of the government. Power is what politics is all about.

The worst thing that could happen, from the standpoint of those seeking more government power over the economy, would be for the economy to begin recovering on its own while months were being spent debating the need for a “stimulus” bill. As the president’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said, you can’t let a crisis “go to waste” when “it’s an opportunity to do things you could not do before.”

There are lots of people in the Obama administration who want to do things that have not been done before – and to do them before the public realizes what is happening.

The proliferation of White House “czars” in charge of everything from financial issues to media issues is more of the same circumvention of the public and of the Constitution. Czars don’t have to be confirmed by the Senate, the way Cabinet members must be, even though czars may wield more power, so you may never know what these people are like, until it is too late.

What Barak Obama says Wednesday night is not nearly as important as what he has been doing – and how he has been doing it.

Also in a recent Washington Examiner, Kevin Mooney discusses new analysis of the “Obamacare” health care overhaul legislation from National Right to Work experts who have unearthed several disturbing provisions in the proposed bills that secretly intended to grant sweeping new forced unionism powers to union bosses.

Coupled with bailouts of $10 billion dollars and exclusive union access to lucrative federal grants, the union brass will now be placed in a policymaking and implementation role with respect to a statute intended to facilitate the forced unionization of nearly every health care employee.

History shows the future of union bosses who will abuse their newfound power to shut down medical facilities with sick-outs and strikes; force doctors, nurses, and in-home care providers to abandon their patients, so as to dictate terms and conditions of employment; and impose a failed, Detroit-style management model on the entire health care field.

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775 – you have had 234 years to get it right; it is still broke losing more every year.

Social Security was established in 1935 – you have had 74 years to get it right; it is still broke with many people on it who never paid into it.

Fannie Mae was established in 1938 – you have had 71 years to get it right; it is still broke.

The “War on Poverty” started in 1964 – you have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to “the poor”; it hasn’t worked and our entire country is broke.

Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 – you’ve had 44 years to get it right; they are still broke.

Freddie Mac was established in 1970 – you have had 39 years to get it right; it is broke.

Trillions of dollars were spent in the massive political payoffs called TARP, the “Stimulus”, the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009… none show any signs of working, although ACORN appears to have found a new source of income: the American taxpayer.

And finally, to set a new record:

“Cash for Clunkers” was established in 2009! It took good dependable cars (that were the best some people could afford) and replaced them with high-priced and less-affordable cars, mostly Japanese. A good percentage of the profits went out of the country. And the American taxpayers take the hit for Congress’ generosity in burning three billion more of our dollars on failed experiments.

So with a perfect 100% failure rate and a record that proves that “services” government provides fail, you want Americans to believe you can be trusted with a government-run health care system … 20% of our entire economy?